Subby, imagine for a moment, if you can, being someone responsible for not only earning a fortune and making all of the intelligent business decisions that doing such requires, but also for ensuring that enough of your wealth is redistributed via downward trickles so that the less motivated underclasses are permitted their basic necessities. Do you think that perhaps you might feel slightly dis-compassionate on some days? Perhaps a little resentful? No? Well, then, perhaps you should nominate yourself for sainthood. Even the wealthy are human, subby. Even they must occasionally bend to the service of baser emotions. Perhaps you should learn to forgive them those infrequent failings, as they so often -- daily, even -- forgive the failings of those whom they benefit.

I'd modify it to "Poor people are chintzy because they like eating food", "Middle Class people are good tippers", and "Rich people are rich because they got rich by (among other things) not giving away money."

/Or they got rich by actually pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and wonder why everyone else can't do the same thing.

Pocket Ninja:Subby, imagine for a moment, if you can, being someone responsible for not only earning a fortune and making all of the intelligent business decisions that doing such requires, but also for ensuring that enough of your wealth is redistributed via downward trickles so that the less motivated underclasses are permitted their basic necessities. Do you think that perhaps you might feel slightly dis-compassionate on some days? Perhaps a little resentful? No? Well, then, perhaps you should nominate yourself for sainthood. Even the wealthy are human, subby. Even they must occasionally bend to the service of baser emotions. Perhaps you should learn to forgive them those infrequent failings, as they so often -- daily, even -- forgive the failings of those whom they benefit.

I'd modify it to "Poor people are chintzy because they like eating food", "Middle Class people are good tippers", and "Rich people are rich because they got rich by (among other things) not giving away money."

/Or they got rich by actually pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and wonder why everyone else can't do the same thing.

Well maybe if MY dad gave me a farking bootstrap factory for my 18th birthday too I'd be as rich as they are.

Pocket Ninja:Subby, imagine for a moment, if you can, being someone responsible for not only earning a fortune and making all of the intelligent business decisions that doing such requires, but also for ensuring that enough of your wealth is redistributed via downward trickles so that the less motivated underclasses are permitted their basic necessities. Do you think that perhaps you might feel slightly dis-compassionate on some days? Perhaps a little resentful? No? Well, then, perhaps you should nominate yourself for sainthood. Even the wealthy are human, subby. Even they must occasionally bend to the service of baser emotions. Perhaps you should learn to forgive them those infrequent failings, as they so often -- daily, even -- forgive the failings of those whom they benefit.

Pocket Ninja:for ensuring that enough of your wealth is redistributed via downward trickles so that the less motivated underclasses are permitted their basic necessities.

AHH yes, it's definitely laziness. If everyone just became stock brokers and CEOs instead of farmers, miners, and teachers, the wealth disparity would evaporate overnight. They're just so lazy, they don't have the time or effort to invest all that money they don't have in the futures markets.

DiffMavis:Pocket Ninja: for ensuring that enough of your wealth is redistributed via downward trickles so that the less motivated underclasses are permitted their basic necessities.

AHH yes, it's definitely laziness. If everyone just became stock brokers and CEOs instead of farmers, miners, and teachers, the wealth disparity would evaporate overnight. They're just so lazy, they don't have the time or effort to invest all that money they don't have in the futures markets.

Good call!

Are you new here? Pocket Ninja is not a debate partner. He is a satirical clown for our enjoyment.

Cause and effect, man. TFA probably has 'em backwards. Lacking compassion and prioritizing profit over other things a big halp if you're trying to gain lots of wealth, it's not the wealth that makes people dicks.

Most rich people rarely come into close contact with those in need. I recently asked a child in our school in Westwood if he knew anyone who ever went to bed hungry for lack of food. "No one," he answered. I suspect that's typical. Increasingly in America, wealth insulates us: Where once we sat on bleachers together, now the wealthy sit in box seats. They fly in private planes (or relax in exclusive clubs at the airport), live behind gates and in general maintain a buffer from those who are less fortunate. Studies suggest that actual personal distance in conversation grows with wealth as well.

Exactly.

When I was a kid I went to school with poor folks. I had friends who were one step away from being 'dirt' poor. The town was small then, with only a very few 'rich' people. The rest were working middle class. Then, along came a community for the very wealthy, positioned right on the barrier island, where you needed to have a 7 figure income just to be considered as a resident.

Boy! Did things change and not for the better, IMO. Property values started climbing and suddenly, we started accumulating gated communities where none were before and the acreage on the island went from $5000 for a lot to $50,000 almost over night.

I used to prowl the beaches at night when I got off work around 11:00 and no one bugged me. I drove a beater of a car. Liked to night fish. Even hunted for Spanish Gold. Within 2 decades, I started getting stopped by the cops because my car wasn't new enough. Cops checked on me if I was metal detecting along the beaches. I noticed more cops in that area than anywhere else in town.

Over the years I've worked for many rich folks and they just don't think like us. Many have been pleasant enough, but their sense of values seem skewed. Like an elderly couple had a home nursing aid take care of the husband during the week and they thought she was the best thing since peanut butter. She drove 30 miles one way in a car that was essentially held together with rust and tape. Since their kids were all rich and out of state, she invited these folks over for Xmas and they had a great time. She used to bring them home cooked thanksgiving dinner.

The man had an old Cadillac in prime shape and wanted to get a new one, but the dealers would not give him what he felt the old one was worth. So he decided to give it to one of his sons, who did not want it and admitted he'd sell it.

Yet, here was the Nursing Aide who sputtered into town every day in a rolling wreck, bent over backwards to be nice to them and help them out, and it never dawned on either of them to just give her the car.

I aint rich but I have given a couple of cars away when I got another one. Usually to friends who have needed them.

I've worked for wealthy folks in various professions and learned the true meaning of 'it's just business' when they slashed a friends throat to gain an advantage. Then they couldn't understand why I had a hard time with that concept. Plus they still stayed friends!

Someone once told me that the majority of charitable donations come from the rich and without them, many museums and colleges could not exist. I considered that when they plowed down some wonderful wild woods to poke in a golf course and clubhouse. Then they plowed under land that was considered too ecologically endangered to build on so they could install $500,000 houses with a view of the river.

I wondered how much they would contribute to charity if it were not tax deductible.

We have a homeless shelter in my town that struggles from week to week to survive. Most homeless folks somehow manage to get run out of town, which is illegal but it happens. Instead of donating to the shelter, the well off folks built a live theater to put on plays -- right on the barrier island. Then they built a museum and commissioned a remarkably ugly steel I beam sculpture to go in front. Right behind it, they plowed over the best spot to harvest oysters along the river and put in tennis courts, a walking path and a boat ramp.

I wondered if a fraction of those millions might have been better used at the homeless shelter. However, dirty, stinky people usually occupy the place and don't measure up to a gleaming new museum or well tended, rustic walking path.

They put in a couple of nice little parks. Renovated a few 'historic' buildings, gentrified the old main street and even moved an old rail way station, renovated it and poked it in a park by the rails as a historic building -- even though there hasn't been a train stopping in our town for decades.

Yet, during the hard times, the government started free food banks for those who qualified. Once a month you showed up and got a selection of odd, off brand goods, like canned meats, vegetables, Kusin Jud's Ciken Soup, boxes of macaroni and so on. It helped a lot of folks.

The warehouse they used was donated by the city, which decided to tear it down, so the bank had to move -- but couldn't find anywhere in town cheap enough to rent. No one would give them a break. So they moved 25 miles away to their main base in the next city. That means a lot of local folks can't get there to get the free food.

Yet I can drive around town and spot many unused and rotting buildings owned by the city that could have been used for the give away. There are warehouses going out of business, but they won't lower the rents for the food bank.

The rich own a lot of properties, most developed and many empty, but they'll tear them down if they catch the homeless living in them and they will not rent them out for a reasonable rate.

The last hurricane washed a freighter over the reef and it beached on the shore of a wealthy lady's home. She raised such a stink about it being there on 'her' beach that they had the thing pulled out and removed in record time while everyone else was trying to recover from the massive damages the storm caused.

The freighter blocked her scenic view. Plus it was rusty and work battered and generally unpleasant to view.

Money changes people and a whole lot of it can change them dramatically. Especially if you grow up surrounded by obscene amounts of money.

A wealthy guy I took care of once reamed out his company manager, who was on vacation in another state with his family. He said things to him over the phone that made me want to punch him in the nose. He concluded the call by telling the guy if he wanted his job, he had better be back in the office by the next day.

I might have done the world a favor by going out back, getting a 2x4 and just whacking him in the head a few times with it.

He died about a year later, after firing my arse anyhow because I had problems treating him with the respect he felt he 'deserved'. His wife, a quiet, small woman, wound up moving in her much younger tennis instructor almost before the dirt packed down on his grave.

I think they should have driven a spike through his heart just to make sure and then poured cement over everything, laced with rebar.

Know what? I don't even recall his name. His small factory closed up some years ago and I don't think anyone even misses it. I don't even recall the name of the place.

However, he did live in this huge house in a gated community with security, right on the oceans edge, valued then at almost a million. His wife got it all. I figure she deserved it after putting up with him.

Funny. I've found people in the lower and middle classes much more generous with their time and money than I ever have among the wealthy.

The Lone Gunman:Pocket Ninja: Subby, imagine for a moment, if you can, being someone responsible for not only earning a fortune and making all of the intelligent business decisions that doing such requires, but also for ensuring that enough of your wealth is redistributed via downward trickles so that the less motivated underclasses are permitted their basic necessities. Do you think that perhaps you might feel slightly dis-compassionate on some days? Perhaps a little resentful? No? Well, then, perhaps you should nominate yourself for sainthood. Even the wealthy are human, subby. Even they must occasionally bend to the service of baser emotions. Perhaps you should learn to forgive them those infrequent failings, as they so often -- daily, even -- forgive the failings of those whom they benefit.